Nine year old student from Horwich wins prize to cook with chef Gino D'Acampo

6th October 2010, 11:36am

A nine year old student from Claypool School in Horwich won a Bolton Council competition where pupils were invited to send in their ideas for a pizza or pasta recipe with a local twist.

Matthew Wolfendale cooked up his winning recipe of Goosnargh Duck and creamy pasta, with celebrity chef Gino D'Acampo at Bolton's recent Food and Drink Festival. 

The dish will now be served up for all the pupils at Wolfendale's school by Bolton Council's school meals chef Phil Ogden on October 14.

The winning student said: "Cooking with Gino was brilliant, he's one of my favourite chefs. I was shellshocked when I found out I'd won. Goosnargh's local, I love pasta, and a lot of the chefs use duck but Gino doesn't cook it that often so I thought I'd try it."

The TV chef added: "It's very important to invest in young people and I think it's brilliant that the council did a competition like this to encourage youngsters to cook."

Councillor Akhtar Zaman, Bolton Council's executive member for environmental services, said: "This was a fantastic prize for an aspiring young chef like Matthew. Our award winning school meals team are always looking for innovative ways to get our young people interested in cooking and the competition was a great way to do just that. 

"We also wanted to encourage young people to explore local ingredients, which ties in how we source food - around 80 per cent of ingredients for our school dinners come from suppliers living in the area, compared with the national figure of 27 per cent."

Related Articles:

• 19 Jul 2010 - Bolton's best school chef revealed
• 18 Jun 2010 - Top chefs star at Bolton Food and Drink Festival
• 19 Aug 2009 - Bolton to host speciality food and drink market
• 11 Aug 2009 - Bolton's school meals taste challenge kicks off today

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